Monday, March 11, 2019

NVIDIA agreed to acquire Mellanox in a deal valued at approximately $6.9 billion.

The merger targets data centers in general and the high-performance computing (HPC) market in particular. Together, NVIDIA’s computing platform and Mellanox’s interconnects power over 250 of the world’s TOP500 supercomputers and have as customers every major cloud service provider and computer maker. Mellanox pioneered the InfiniBand interconnect technology, which along with its high-speed Ethernet products is now used in over half of the world’s fastest supercomputers and in many leading hyperscale datacenters.

NVIDIA said the acquired assets enables it to data center-scale workloads across the entire computing, networking and storage stack to achieve higher performance, greater utilization and lower operating cost for customers.

“The emergence of AI and data science, as well as billions of simultaneous computer users, is fueling skyrocketing demand on the world’s datacenters,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. “Addressing this demand will require holistic architectures that connect vast numbers of fast computing nodes over intelligent networking fabrics to form a giant datacenter-scale compute engine.

“We share the same vision for accelerated computing as NVIDIA,” said Eyal Waldman, founder and CEO of Mellanox. “Combining our two companies comes as a natural extension of our longstanding partnership and is a great fit given our common performance-driven cultures. This combination will foster the creation of powerful technology and fantastic opportunities for our people.”

NVIDIA also promised to continue investing in Israel, where Mellanox is based.

NGINX, which is based in San Francisco, offers an open source, web server that can be used as a reverse proxy, load balancer, mail proxy and HTTP cache. The solution is widely deployed on websites. The first version of NGINX was released in 2004. Investors in NGINX include e.ventures, Goldman Sachs, Index Ventures, MSD Capital, NEA, Runa Capital and Telstra.

F5 plans to enhance NGINX’s current offerings with F5 security solutions and will integrate F5 cloud-native innovations with NGINX’s software load balancing technology, accelerating F5’s time to market of application services for modern, containerized applications. F5 will also leverage its global sales force, channel infrastructure, and partner ecosystem to scale NGINX selling opportunities to the enterprise.

F5 intends to maintain the NGINX brand. F5 also said open source is a core part of its’s multi-cloud strategy.

“F5’s acquisition of NGINX strengthens our growth trajectory by accelerating our software and multi-cloud transformation,” said François Locoh-Donou, President & CEO of F5. “By bringing F5’s world-class application security and rich application services portfolio for improving performance, availability, and management together with NGINX’s leading software application delivery and API management solutions, unparalleled credibility and brand recognition in the DevOps community, and massive open source user base, we bridge the divide between NetOps and DevOps with consistent application services across an enterprise’s multi-cloud environment.”

“NGINX and F5 share the same mission and vision. We both believe applications are at the heart of driving digital transformation. And we both believe that an end-to-end application infrastructure—one that spans from code to customer—is needed to deliver apps across a multi-cloud environment,” said Gus Robertson, CEO of NGINX, Inc. “I’m excited to continue this journey by adding the power of NGINX’s open source innovation to F5’s ADC leadership and enterprise reach. F5 gains depth with solutions designed for DevOps, while NGINX gains breadth with access to tens of thousands of customers and partners.”

The Linux Foundation will host the CHIPS Alliance project. which curates high-quality open source code relevant to the design of silicon devices for mobile, computing, consumer electronics, and Internet of Things (IoT) applications.

CHIPS Alliance backers include Esperanto Technologies, Google, SiFive and Western Digital, all of which are committed to both open source hardware and continued momentum behind the free and open RISC-V architecture.

"Open collaboration has repeatedly proven to help industries accelerate time to market, achieve long-term maintainability, and create de facto standards," said Mike Dolan, vice president of strategic programs, the Linux Foundation. "The same collaboration model applies to the hardware in a system, just as it does to software components. We are eager to host the CHIPS Alliance and invite more organizations to join the initiative to help propel collaborative innovation within the CPU and SoC markets."

"As new workloads surface every day, we need new silicon designs in order to optimize processing requirements," said Martin Fink, interim CEO of RISC-V Foundation and executive vice president and CTO of Western Digital. "Today's legacy general purpose architectures are, in some cases, decades old. With the creation of the CHIPS Alliance, we are expecting to fast-track silicon innovation through the open source community."

Western Digital -- planning to contribute their high performance, 9-stage, dual issue, 32-bit SweRV Core, together with a test bench, and high performance SweRV Instruction set simulator. Additional contribution will be specification and early implementations of OmniXtend cache coherence protocol.

SiFive -- was founded by the inventors of the free and open RISC-V Instruction Set Architecture, who, together with their colleagues at UC Berkeley, developed the first opensource RISC-V microprocessors and a new opensource hardware description language Chisel. This initial work at UC Berkeley also developed the RocketChip SoC generator, including the initial version of the TileLink coherent interconnect fabric.

Seaborn Networks has established an interconnection to DE-CIX New York from its Seabras-1 subsea cable.

Seabras-1 is a fully operational 6-fiber pair, 72Tbps submarine cable system between Brazil and the U.S. offering the lowest latency path between São Paulo and the NY metro area.

Seaborn’s interconnection to DE-CIX New York provides Seabras-1 customers in South America with the ability to reach over 200 networks within the U.S. without incurring long provisioning intervals and additional costs such as cross connect fees.

Customers will also have Direct access to DE-CIX Frankfurt and Marseille via GlobePEER Remote. There is no additional cross connect fees to reach any DE-CIX customer globally.

“I am thrilled that DE-CIX’s unique solution is now available to South American networks over Seabras-1’s lowest latency network to New York,” comments Ed d'Agostino, General Manager, DE-CIX North America. “Through Seaborn, DE-CIX is readily accessible throughout Brazil bringing world-class connectivity between North America and South America and Europe.”

At OCP Summit 2019 later this week in San Jose, California, Molex and Innovium will host a joint demonstration combining Molex’s BiPass I/O technology with Innovium’s 12.8Tbps TERALYNX Switch ASIC.

The companies say the new switch system design offers better signal integrity, thermal management and simple manufacturability, providing the end customer a highly robust and resilient system.

Molex's low-insertion-loss, BiPass I/O technology serves as a PCB alternative to enable efficient and reliable implementation of 56 and 112 Gbps PAM-4 protocols. The BiPass cable assembly routes signals directly from an ASIC chip in a switch to the server front-panel I/O without having to go through the printed circuit board between them. Because the ASIC can be positioned farther back in the box, the BiPass solution allows for vertical orientation, providing greater port density. For further cost benefits, the BiPass solution reduces the number of board layers and eliminate the power cost and consumption of re-timers. From a thermal management perspective, the BiPass solution uses dual heatsinks, on the top and bottom of module, making cooling of 20W modules possible.

“By leveraging the combined capabilities of Innovium’s TERALYNX 12.8Tbps switch ASIC and Molex’s BiPass I/O technology, we are highlighting better performance and more operational efficiencies for our customer’s evolving data center needs,” said Chris Kapuscinski, global product manager, Molex. “The BiPass and Innovium demo shows that even at 112 Gbps, copper is still a viable and more economical option.”

Avi Networks has more than doubled its revenue and number of customers each year for the past three years.

The company says large enterprises are replacing their legacy ADCs (application delivery controllers) with the Avi software platform for both data center and cloud use cases. Avi claims hundreds of global enterprises, including the world’s largest financial services, media, and technology companies, are now using its platform. Instead of managing hundreds of physical or virtual appliances, Avi customers can dispatch services like load balancing and web application firewall to any application using one centralized interface. Avi’s technology effortlessly spans bare-metal servers and private and public clouds, making it a natural choice for hybrid and multi-cloud environments.

“There’s a reason we take so many customers from legacy vendors,” said Avi Networks CEO Amit Pandey. “We remain the only enterprise-grade solution that deploys consistently across all environments. In response, legacy vendors are developing siloed solutions for each environment or attempting to modernize through acquisitions. Meanwhile our architecture and controller technology are years ahead and getting better all the time. It’s no wonder that enterprises are choosing Avi Networks for their business-critical applications.”

Avi Networks also noted that it has also updated its platform with over 250 new features, including advanced controller and process analytics, client log streaming, and the release of Avi SaaS — the world’s first cloud-managed load balancing solution.

Avi Networks, a start-up based in Santa Clara, California, announced $60 million in new funding including investments from Cisco Investments along with DAG Ventures, Greylock Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Menlo Ventures.

Cisco resells the Avi Vantage Platform in markets around the world, and Avi closely integrates with Cisco ACI, Cisco’s intent-based networking and automation solution for the data center.

Avi Networks offers an application delivery controller (ADC) with a Software Load Balancer, an Intelligent Web Application Firewall, and an Elastic Service Mesh for container-based applications. The company says that as businesses shift their operations to clouds such as Azure and AWS, its intent-based software offers easier management, faster performance, greater elasticity, deeper analytics, and more powerful automation than legacy ADC vendors.

Avi also reports that it has tripled its bookings over the past year, with significant adoption by the Global 2000 and 20% of the Fortune 50.

This latest round brings Avi’s total funding to $115 million.

“Modern applications are driving a new urgency with which enterprises are automating their networks and application delivery systems,” said Amit Pandey, CEO of Avi Networks. “Cisco software and infrastructure are a cornerstone in this transformation. I am thrilled about this strategic investment from Cisco and our continued joint efforts to deliver the elasticity, intelligence, and multi-cloud capabilities that enterprises need.”

Avi Networks is headed by Amit Pandey, who joined the company as CEO in 2015. Previously, Pandey spent nearly a decade at NetApp in a wide range of executive positions, and followed that with two successful stints at startups - first as CEO of TerraCotta that was acquired by the European software giant, Software AG and next as CEO of Zenprise that was acquired by Citrix.

Avi Networks was co-founded in November 2012 by Umesh Mahajan, who previously was VP/GM of Data Center Switching at Cisco; Murali Basavaiah, who previously was VP Engineering at Cisco for NX-OS Software and Nexus 7000/MDS product; and Ranga Rajagopalan, who previously was Sr. Director of Engineering at Cisco and responsible for NX-OS systems/platform software for the Cisco Nexus 7000.

Zayo announced that a major international bank has selected it to provide wavelength connectivity for a network expansion project in the U.S. and need for future capacity requirements.

The dedicated wavelength solution will connect approximately 10 locations for the customer primarily on the East Coast.

“The sale is an excellent illustration of our vertical segment approach deepening a relationship with an existing customer,” said Jack Waters, president of Zayo Networks and COO. “They worked closely with the customer to develop this unique solution, which will enable the bank to continue to scale their network across a strategic geography.”

Marvell Technology Group reported revenue of $745 million for its fourth quarter of fiscal 2019 (ended 02-Feb-2109).

GAAP net loss from continuing operations for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2019 was $(261) million, or $(0.40) per diluted share. Non-GAAP net income from continuing operations for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2019 was $168 million, or $0.25 per diluted share. Cash flow from operations for the fourth quarter was $107 million.

Revenue for fiscal 2019 was $2.9 billion. GAAP net loss from continuing operations for fiscal 2019 was $(179) million, or $(0.30) per diluted share. Non-GAAP net income from continuing operations for fiscal 2019 was $716 million, or $1.19 per diluted share. Cash flow from operations for fiscal 2019 was $597 million

"Marvell continued to improve its financial performance in fiscal 2019, while also increasing scale and diversifying its business through the acquisition of Cavium. While macroeconomic conditions are currently impacting our first quarter outlook, we expect growth to resume in the second quarter," said Matt Murphy, Marvell's President and Chief Executive Officer. "Looking ahead, we are excited about our expanding position in the 5G market, including our recently announced partnership with Samsung, which includes multiple generations of baseband and control plane processors for both LTE and 5G base stations."

Radio Access SoCs: The OCTEON Fusion-M product line is optimized for cost/power and programmable with a 3GPP protocol stack split and massive MIMO capabilities. Marvell's SoCs set the performance benchmark for both LTE-A and 5G NR, with multiple deployments through key industry partners.

Transport/EPC Core Processors: Multi-core OCTEON processors that are optimized to address the most demanding use cases of 5G NR. Marvell's scalable data-plane acceleration makes its embedded processors ideal for 5G Core/EPC applications at the heart of the network as well. Marvell uniquely offers a single unified architecture for both transport and EPC core.